Left Turn

Left Turn
Author: Tim Groseclose
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2011-07-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1429987464

A leading political scientist provides a rigorous and revealing analysis of liberal media bias: “I’m no conservative, but I loved Left Turn” (Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics). Dr. Tim Groseclose, a professor of political science and economics at UCLA, has spent years constructing precise, quantitative measures of the slant of media outlets. He does this by measuring the political content of news, as a way to measure the PQ, or “political quotient” of voters and politicians. Among his conclusions are: (i) all mainstream media outlets have a liberal bias; and (ii) while some supposedly conservative outlets—such the Washington Times or Fox News’ Special Report—do lean right, their conservative bias is less than the liberal bias of most mainstream outlets. Groseclose contends that the general leftward bias of the media has shifted the PQ of the average American by about 20 points, on a scale of 100, the difference between the current political views of the average American, and the political views of the average resident of Orange County, California or Salt Lake County, Utah. With Left Turn readers can easily calculate their own PQ—to decide for themselves if the bias exists. This timely, much-needed study brings fact to this often overheated debate.

The Problem of the Media

The Problem of the Media
Author: Robert D. McChesney
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2004-03-01
Genre: Current Events
ISBN: 1583671064

The symptoms of the crisis of the U.S. media are well-known—a decline in hard news, the growth of info-tainment and advertorials, staff cuts and concentration of ownership, increasing conformity of viewpoint and suppression of genuine debate. McChesney's new book, The Problem of the Media, gets to the roots of this crisis, explains it, and points a way forward for the growing media reform movement. Moving consistently from critique to action, the book explores the political economy of the media, illuminating its major flashpoints and controversies by locating them in the political economy of U.S. capitalism. It deals with issues such as the declining quality of journalism, the question of bias, the weakness of the public broadcasting sector, and the limits and possibilities of antitrust legislation in regulating the media. It points out the ways in which the existing media system has become a threat to democracy, and shows how it could be made to serve the interests of the majority. McChesney's Rich Media, Poor Democracy was hailed as a pioneering analysis of the way in which media had come to serve the interests of corporate profit rather than public enlightenment and debate. Bill Moyers commented, "If Thomas Paine were around, he would have written this book." The Problem of the Media is certain to be a landmark in media studies, a vital resource for media activism, and essential reading for concerned scholars and citizens everywhere.

News for the Rich, White, and Blue

News for the Rich, White, and Blue
Author: Nikki Usher
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2021-07-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0231545606

As cash-strapped metropolitan newspapers struggle to maintain their traditional influence and quality reporting, large national and international outlets have pivoted to serving readers who can and will choose to pay for news, skewing coverage toward a wealthy, white, and liberal audience. Amid rampant inequality and distrust, media outlets have become more out of touch with the democracy they purport to serve. How did journalism end up in such a predicament, and what are the prospects for achieving a more equitable future? In News for the Rich, White, and Blue, Nikki Usher recasts the challenges facing journalism in terms of place, power, and inequality. Drawing on more than a decade of field research, she illuminates how journalists decide what becomes news and how news organizations strategize about the future. Usher shows how newsrooms remain places of power, largely white institutions growing more elite as journalists confront a shrinking job market. She details how Google, Facebook, and the digital-advertising ecosystem have wreaked havoc on the economic model for quality journalism, leaving local news to suffer. Usher also highlights how the handful of likely survivors—well-funded media outlets such as the New York Times—increasingly appeal to a global, “placeless” reader. News for the Rich, White, and Blue concludes with a series of provocative recommendations to reimagine journalism to ensure its resiliency and its ability to speak to a diverse set of issues and readers.

The Disinformation Age

The Disinformation Age
Author: W. Lance Bennett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2020-10-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108843050

This book shows how disinformation spread by partisan organizations and media platforms undermines institutional legitimacy on which authoritative information depends.

Digital Rebellion

Digital Rebellion
Author: Todd Wolfson
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2014-11-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0252096800

Digital Rebellion examines the impact of new media and communication technologies on the spatial, strategic, and organizational fabric of social movements. Todd Wolfson reveals how aspects of the mid-1990s Zapatistas movement--network organizational structure, participatory democratic governance, and the use of communication tools as a binding agent--became essential parts of Indymedia and other Cyber Left organizations. From there he uses oral interviews and other rich ethnographic data to chart the media-based think tanks and experiments that continued the Cyber Left's evolution through the Independent Media Center's birth around the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle. Melding virtual and traditional ethnographic practice to explore the Cyber Left's cultural logic, Wolfson maps the social, spatial and communicative structure of the Indymedia network and details its operations on the local, national and global level. He looks at the participatory democracy that governs global social movements and the ways democracy and decentralization have come into tension, and how "the switchboard of struggle" conducts stories from the hyper-local and disperses them worldwide. As he shows, understanding the intersection of Indymedia and the Global Social Justice Movement illuminates their foundational role in the Occupy struggle and other emergent movements that have re-energized radical politics.

The Whole World Is Watching

The Whole World Is Watching
Author: Todd Gitlin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2003-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780520239326

New preface for this classic of media studies. One of the founders of SDS describes the response of the various news organizations and arrives at the way the New Left came to be characterized.

Inventing Reality

Inventing Reality
Author: Michael Parenti
Publisher:
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2022-03-09
Genre:
ISBN: 9781471731822

This study looks at the role of the print and electronic media in defining "respectable" political discourse in the United States. From a critical perpective, Parenti looks at the economics and politics of "presenting" the news and argues that the media systematically distort the news. This manufactured reality deprives the public of necessary information for effective participation in government. This edition has been updated throughout, and there is coverage of the media's treatment of the US invasion of Panama, the war against Iraq and the collapse of communism. Other titles by Michael Parenti include "Democracy for the Few", "Power and the Powerless", "The Sword and the Dollar: Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race" and "Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment".

Media and Left

Media and Left
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2014-09-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004272933

The recent economic crisis, and the challenges to democracy in an increasingly globalized world, brings into sharp relief the importance of mass communication. This volume explores a range of issues, from the nature of communication, to the role of the media industry, to the way that mass communication has facilitated social movements in many parts of the world. Revisiting the works of Karl Marx and others, the essays bring a new perspective and a renewed interest in critical analyses of communication practices globally. This collection represents the cutting edge of communication research introducing a new generation of scholars to understanding changes in the way we learn about our society. Contributors are: Arthur Asa Berger, Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Savaş Çoban, John Bellamy Foster, Christian Fuchs, Douglas Kellner, Robert W. McChesney, David Miller, Marisol Sandoval, Nick Stevenson, Gerald Sussman, Mandy Tröger, and Michael Wayne.

American Media and Mass Culture

American Media and Mass Culture
Author: Donald Lazere
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 638
Release: 1987
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520044951

"On subjects from Superman to rock 'n' roll, from Donald Duck to the TV news, from soap operas and romance novels to the use of double speak in advertising, these lively essays offer students of contemporary media a comprehensive counterstatement to the conservatism that has been ascendant since the seventies in American politics and cultural criticism. Donald Lazere brings together selections from nearly forty of the most prominent marxist, feminist, and other leftist critics of American mass culture--from a dozen academic disciplines and fields of media activism. The collection will appeal to a wide range of students, scholars, and general readers." -- Book Jacket.

Democracy and the Left

Democracy and the Left
Author: Evelyne Huber
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2012-09-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0226356558

Although inequality in Latin America ranks among the worst in the world, it has notably declined over the last decade, offset by improvements in health care and education, enhanced programs for social assistance, and increases in the minimum wage. In Democracy and the Left, Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens argue that the resurgence of democracy in Latin America is key to this change. In addition to directly affecting public policy, democratic institutions enable left-leaning political parties to emerge, significantly influencing the allocation of social spending on poverty and inequality. But while democracy is an important determinant of redistributive change, it is by no means the only factor. Drawing on a wealth of data, Huber and Stephens present quantitative analyses of eighteen countries and comparative historical analyses of the five most advanced social policy regimes in Latin America, showing how international power structures have influenced the direction of their social policy. They augment these analyses by comparing them to the development of social policy in democratic Portugal and Spain. The most ambitious examination of the development of social policy in Latin America to date, Democracy and the Left shows that inequality is far from intractable—a finding with crucial policy implications worldwide.